My Real Home
by Ankara Dumbledore
Summary: Rating for later. Hermione's life at home is falling apart. Feeling really depressed she starts to self-harm.
1. Prologue

She couldn't face going back indoors.

If she walked in, their faces would look up at her, polite, expectant; they would be ready to make allowances. The meal would be finished: her plate and her scattered cutlery would have been quickly removed from the table. Her toppled chair would be righted, the small chip in it turned away so nobody could see it. Her mother would say something to smooth over her rudeness, and the others would make sympathetic noises, some of them genuine. 

No-one understood. They would be having coffee now, passing the cream, passing the sugar, in the large living room with the windows closed against the summer evening - as if it could harm them, as if nothing had changed

Everything had changed

At the top of the stairs to the garden, she filled her lungs with cool air. It was dusk. A faint light from the windows fell on the terrace, and a fountain played below, splashing any bird that dared to venture near. The trickle out to be soothing, but nothing could soothe her; she had to get away, go back. Down the steps, out of sight of the house. Away to somewhere that would be welcoming when she got home. Somewhere she could live. Mown lawn welcomed her feet, yielding silently to her tread. The cool toughness of cypress leaves brushed her face as she pushed through the row of conifers; the air was heavy with the smell of freshly cut grass and damp earth. She closed her eyes as memory surged through her like the delayed after-shock of pain. She felt detached from her body: from her walking feet, her breathing lungs.

In the lower garden, she paused for a moment to listen, staring towards Scotland, and thinking of the fun she had there. Had. People said you could hear the screams of dying people, even from this distance. Nothing. She felt oddly disappointed hearing only the whirr of moth wings, the clear hoot of an owl in the copse next to the house, just catching the swishing flicker of bats wings. Nothing else disturbed the silence.

She lowered her head and walked on towards the glimmer of the lake, the only soothing remedy she could ever find. Along a mossy path, down a leaf strewn clutter of steps. You can't do it. You can't make a bargain with them. She had once thought of them as parents, now she thought of them as enemies. Funny how your view of people changes with one little action, one little comment. She laughed derisively.

The story of her life.

The evening was a relief from the heat of the day, so blisteringly hot and humid that your clothes stuck to your body, like a second skin. She didn't bother taking off her clothes, just leapt in. The freezing water rushed up over her body to her face, making a shiver run up her back. She was the first to ruffle the smooth glittering surface of the lake tonight, and she hoped she would be the only one. Not that she didn't enjoy watching Hope's brother Charity swimming. The first dive, a flying arrow, a deep, sure underwater curve, making gold tails of fish flicker away into the weed that grew. It was like watching a wild animal; humans fought the water, Charity rode it.

Butterfly was his specialty. Arched back, the trail and fling of arms, hips undulating in the rhythmic sway and push; he was the master of the water, and the water mastered him. Gleaming all over he would pull himself out after a vigorous session and walk over to the fruit trees and pick whatever fruit was in season. As he usually swam at sunset, 'best time to practice: after a hard day', the red light would come streaming through the branches and glance of him. It was easily photographable. Lean muscles making subtle curves all over his body, casting a long shadow cross the width of grass. 

She came up gasping and shivering. Deciding it was too cold to stay; she pulled herself out and stood in the half-light, watching the house. No, not yet. She turned away and padded through the trees, relishing the soft tufts of grass that enclosed her foot in a brushing tangle of green, and the occasional shock of old pinecones that dropped last year or the years before, and lay undisturbed in the same grass, making her foot recoil as she trod lightly on them. 

As she emerged at the other end of the copse, she was confronted by the sudden wash of heat from the sun, now low in the sky, seeming so close to the hill that she was sure she could touch it. Instead, she sat up against the nearest trunk of a cypress tree and watched the red shimmering circle fall lower and lower into the sky, leaving the sky at mercy to the darkness of night. A slight warm breeze slugged its way up the hill and brushed close to her, teasing her hair and clothes dry. It curled its long tentacles around her body, feeling out every crack and drying them for her. It flicked its gentle hands lazily underneath her neck, desperately trying to pull her away, to keep her with it. It was lonely, with only the landscape it happened to come across to keep it company. When she refused to move, it blew itself into an angry rage and whipped around her, and then left back the way it came, taking the fresh scent of water with it.

She sighed and watched a small man in a too large blue overall climbing up the steep hill. The way he occasionally tripped on a small stick and fell forwards, clutching at the tussocks of grass firmly rooted into the solid ground and pulling himself back up told her he had never climbed this hill before. Experienced people, like her mother and father would know the thin beaten track that wound itself in a higgledy-piggledy fashion in every direction but up, that would make sure you never had to keep on the lookout for any unsuspecting stick or hole that may grant itself the liberty of making you tumble down the hill and collect leaves in your hair. 

She watched his toil, allowing herself the freedom of a wry smile, until he finally got to the top, and she wiped it off. The man was bent over double, hands on his knees and panting heavily. His black mop of hair fell forward over his face, covering baby blue eyes, a large eagle shaped nose and olive skin. When he recovered he stood back to his full height, around six feet, and smiled a Cheshire cat smile. She frowned.

"You haven't come round for ages. What have you been doing?"

He shrugged off the question easily. "I've been busy." His voice was low and sounded like he didn't use it much. "Why are you out here? Where's your mum?" 

She flinched at the sound of that word. He noticed but didn't say anything. She pointed a slightly trembling hand in the vague direction of the house, her face unreadable. 

"Thanks Hermione. I've got some stuff to give to Linda, er…Mrs. Granger, er…your mum."

She watched him disappear into the trees, a strange hate running in her blood. She had suspicions that he was the one breaking her family life up, and now she wanted to investigate.

*

Disclaimer: Nope. Don't own it yet. I'm trying very hard to get a share in it though.

Right, so hello again. It's meeeeeeeeeeee. I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I don't really have an excuse. Ah well. I hope you liked this. Prologue's are allowed to be short.


	2. The drunks

"I got you for ten bob, Hermione. Ten bob! That was my price at the time. Ten bob!"

Her mother swayed in the threshold to Hermione's bedroom, leaning slightly to the right, with an empty bottle of wine clutched tightly in her wavering, pale hand. Empty. And there would be 5…10…20 more strewn around the house. The living room directly below would be covered with bottles – green, clear, but all depressingly empty, stood on the coffee table or on the thick carpet around the sofa. Some would be knocked over carelessly as her mother walked out, a last dribble wetting the carpet and making it stick up in thick spikes. A glass would be standing on the coffee table too. Before she gave up on the glasses and resorted to swigging out of the bottle. She took one now. A great, gulping swig that made her eyes water. 

"Ten bob." Her mother muttered under her breath, before turning her back on her daughter and stumbling off, hands held out in front of her like a zombie, so she could be guided by her 'friends'. Hermione watched her go, and let out a long deep sigh of relief when she was fully out of earshot. She'd heard that one more than the others. 

There was a shatter from the stairs, as the wine bottle broke on the floor, and a clattering whirl of arms culminating in a dull thud as her mother fell down the stairs. There was no reassuring 'ow', so Hermione assumed she had either knocked herself out on one of the wooden banisters or fallen into a drunken stupor. Either seemed just as likely. 

_I wish this would all end…I wish I did have this in my life _were the last longing thoughts Hermione had before she let herself fall into a pitch blackness that was deep sleep. Little did she know, she would always regret those thoughts…

*

An extract from Severus Snape's diary. Encrypted. 

*

_It's hard to know where to start with this. I suppose I could tell you were I was born, what it was like when Mum was still around, what stupid things I did to the milkman when I was a little kid, all that kinda stuff, but it's not really relevant. Or maybe it is. I don't know. Most of it I can't remember anyway. It's all just bits and pieces and random memories. Bits of things. Things that may have happened – scraps of images, vague feelings,  faded photographs of nameless people and forgotten places – that kinda thing._

_Anyway, lets get the name out of the way first._

_Severus Snape._

_Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. It doesn't bother me much anymore. I'm used to it. Mind you, there was a time when nothing else seemed to matter. My name made my life unbearable. Severus Snape. Why? Why pick a stupid name like that? I could have had a normal name? Why me? Keith Watson, Darren Jones – something like that. Why was I lumbered with a name that turned heads, a name that got me noticed? A **funny** name. Why? My parents always had been into weird names. Even though they are muggles._

_I've always wondered if I was cursed as a baby to have a rubbish life. I'm different at home because I'm a wizard, and I'm different at school because I'm muggleborn. Very different. I don't know how I managed to get into Slytherin. Probably because I was thinking about smashing my Dad over the head with a glass bottle at the time. I hate my Dad. And he hates me. He blames me for Mum leaving. But that's rubbish – Mum always loved me, much more than she loved him. Me and Iphigenia were the only things keeping her there.  She left because of his drinking and his wastefulness. _

_This – what I'm going to tell you about – it all happened just over a year ago. It was a week before __Chris__tmas and I'd just come home from Hogwarts. Or Xmas, as Dad calls it. Exmas. It was the week before exmas. A Wednesday._

_I was in the kitchen filling a plastic bin-liner with empty beer bottles and Dad was leaning in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, watching me through bloodshot eyes._

_"Don't you go takin' 'em to the bottle bank," he said._

_"No, Dad."_

_"Bloody enviroment this, enviroment that…if anyone wants to use my empty bottles again they'll have to pay for 'em. I don't get 'em for nothing you know."_

_"No."_

_"Why should I give 'em away? What's the enviroment ever done for me?"_

_"Mmm."___

_"Bloody bottle banks…"_

_He paused to puff on his cigarette. I thought of telling him that there's no such thing as the enviroment, but I couldn't be bothered. I filled the bin-liner, tied it, and started on another. Dad was gazing at his reflection in the glass door, rubbing at the bags under his eyes. He may have been quite a handsome man if it wasn't for the drink. Handsome in a short, thuggish kind of way. Five foot seven (I towered over him at six feet even though I'm only sixteen) , tough guy mouth, squarish jaw, oily black hair. He could have looked like one of those bad guys in films – the ones the ladies can't help but fall in love with, even though they're bad – but he didn't. He looked like what he was: a drunk. Fat beer belly, florid skin, yellowed eyes, sagging cheeks and a big fat neck. Old and worn out at forty._

_He leaned over the sink, coughed, spat, and flicked ash down the plughole. "That bloody woman's coming on Friday."_

_'That bloody woman' was my Aunty Ophelia. Dad's older sister. A terrible woman. Think of the worst person you know, double it, and you'll be half way to Aunty Ophelia. I can hardly bear to describe her, to tell you the truth. Furious is the first word that comes to mind. Mad, ugly, and furious. An angular woman, cold and hard, with greasy, lanky black hair and a face that makes you shudder. I don't know what colour her eyes are, but they look as if they never close. They have about as much warmth as two depthless pools. Her mouth is thin and pillar box red, like something drawn by a disturbed child. And she walks faster than most people run. She moves like a huntress, quick and quiet, homing in on her prey. Probably derived from being a teacher. She's the only other witch in our family. I used to have nightmares about her. I still do. _

_I hope I never end up like her._

_*_

Disclaimer: Don't own.

So, everyone liked the first chapter, so what about the second one. I will be giving some more Snape diary later for all you Snape lovers. And there will be Draco as well…review! Review!

Kara


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